Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending April 5, 2024

1. SaaS METRIC OF THE WEEK: This week, a video should be mandatory for onboarding every person in a SaaS company. It's from David Skok and covers hardcore B2B SaaS metrics such as Rule of 40, Repeatability, Net new ARR, Bookings, LTV:CAC, churn etc., etc. It's a metric-packed 20 minutes, so it's easily watchable.


2. AI: Last year, valuations for early-stage AI startups saw a 20% premium compared to other companies raising early-stage capital. This premium also transfers into later-stage companies, with Series B AI rounds seeing 1.5x higher dollars than their counterparts.


3. GROWTH: Here is the start of an incredible three-part article from Notion covering the challenges faced by (VC-backed) startups as they strive to reach $100 m in revenue. Fun fact: Only 1.2% of us will achieve this milestone (welp).


4. AI: According to this a16z report on enterprise buying/usage of generative AI, budgets for AI are moving from one-off tests to proper OpEx. Companies seem to be using more than one model (my team certainly is), and internal use cases are easier to implement (again - samesies).


5. INDUSTRY TRENDS: The SaaS Industry is maturing out of its growth perception, and this is an excellent summary of a recent AGM presentation from Bowery Capital. SDRs and AEs are putting in way more effort to get less results these days. However, AI offers new growth potential in this mature and crowded market, driving ROI and opening up new opportunities for software companies.


6. SHUTDOWNS: According to this post and data from Carta, the number of startups shutting down is on the rise this year compared to last (and this is incomplete Q1 2024 data), and according to Pitchbook, organizations specializing in assisting startups with winding down operations are experiencing significant growth


7. PMF: There is no one prescribed way to tackle product market fit, and this article from Bessemer Venture Partners covers some of the diverse PMF strategies, from focusing on a narrow market to experimenting with pricing. Atlassian's freemium model and Box's enterprise focus highlight the real significance of market choice and adaptive pricing. Lessons like these (and see #10 for more), combined with frameworks for assessing product-market fit, provide some excellent PMF guidance - along with a cool PMF Quadrant. This article has some great observations about early-stage PMF.


8. DESIGN ENGINEERING: A new entry for our Tech Dictionaries. Design Engineering mashes engineering and creative problem-solving skills - UX + Tech. This newish role is handy for new tech shifts of the LLMs and AI kind - I like it. It offers a cross-discipline approach to product development and system design.


9. TRUST: This is a surprisingly interesting and cool report from Edelman, which is a study on trust in tech and with tech companies. Trust dynamics are hard and vary wildly by country (the UK is 39/100, India is 76/100). There is a loss of trust in leadership in several countries, along with distinct concerns around AI and a growing need for innovation regulation (likely all due to AI).


10. CASE STUDY: To add to #7 above, this article is a case study on Pilot, a startup by 3 serial founders on finding Product Market Fit. It explores their learnings across their startups. Key takeaways include picking a large market, solving a genuine customer problem, and building a strong team.


POD OF THE WEEK: Complimenting #7 and #10 above, Dan Olsen (author of the great book The Lean Product Playbook) discusses How to Achieve Product-Market Fit.